Facebook's "trending" feature irritates users

Facebook's attempt at keeping users in the loop on what was happening in the digital space seems to have not gone down too well with users.

According to an ANI report, the social network had taken a lot of flak for the trending stories feature appearing in the right-hand column of users' news feed. The trends are generated on the basis of discussions taking place on Facebook at the time.

The feature has drawn criticism for being actually focused on celebrity gossip and having no relevance to any usage patterns of users.

A Facebook discussion group called 'How do I get rid of trending topics' has, in the last few days been very active, with complaints like: "Trending'' showed up a few months ago and then went away. Silly me–I thought that it was gone for good. I hate this thing–it NEVER has any topics I'm interested in and takes up valuable space. Please make this a hideable option, like Chat.''

The new feature, is available in several countries including US, UK and Canada.

Links to trending topics, which include entertainment, sports and news, being talked about on Facebook are displayed at the right of the main news feed, according to PC World.

Meanwhile, Facebook in response to users' request to remove the trending section said, the feature could not be turned off, adding that it was open to feedback.

The feature is also being rolled out in India. Facebook's trending topics feature, though is somewhat different from Twitter's.

The social network displays the trending topics and also explains why they are trending.

Twitter on the other hand, only lists the popular topics on the website, and gives no details as to why they are popular among users.